The Indian Political Animal

Moving to Centre Right India

2010-04-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

This post is rather overdue, but here it is anyway. The Indian Political Animal has moved to Centre Right India - a new group blog that has been live for almost two months. Some of us felt that we needed to create a unitary space for right of centre thought in the Indian blogosphere. The idea originally germinated in conversation with apolitical friends and Amar Govindarajan and I went on to implement it. We were lucky enough to be able to recruit talented bloggers like Prashant, Chaitanya and Ibn-al-Dunya to our cause.

I intend for Centre Right India to be a platform for the articulation of original Indian political opinion. We're not an especially sectarian bunch and welcome contributions from all across the ideological spectrum. So if the Indian Political Animal has stimulated you in the past, I encourage you to pay Centre Right India a visit and write for us.

This blog shall of course always have a special place in my heart because it is where I first experimented with the medium. It also documents my intellectual evolution, as I moved from maintaining an interest in Indian geopolitics to an interest in Indian politics proper. I should also hope that I've managed to polish my style somewhat after my first, rather adolescent post on 'Containing China'.

In any case, I have enjoyed the journey and been sustained by the occasional thoughtful reader along the way.

Inscrutable Americans - Guest Post

2010-02-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

The Angrezi Baniya speaks angrezi on the Indian Political Animal.

Yet again, ladies and gentlemen yet again. We have finally managed to catch hold of another American terrorist. I had thought Headly was the only Boston Creampie we could have afforded. But lo! And behold with bated breath, he is a full-blown American not a mud-blood muggle.

Now here is the story. He was caught by the vigilant and watchful team of the Police officials at the Delhi IGI Airport. Apparently, one hawk-eyed officials spotted a 5-inch knife through the ‘ayurvedic-material’ he was carrying and yet again this was ‘via Pakistan’. What was once classified as a cross border sport has now become a cross-atlantic thing. No wonder Hon. Kamal Nath proudly exclaimed that “Globalisation is not a one way street”. Im sure we can have Hon. Qureshi come up “Terrorism is not a one way street”, after all we’ve got an America Kasab now In our Zoo of terrorists, which mind you-we proudly display. I can already imagine a full blown Benetton ad. Which we proudly retain to make sure our Supreme Judiciary is rumbling along…you see once a lawyer friend of mine told me Judges and Car batteries are the same: you have to keep them running to make sure they remain warm. But I’ve been informed that the judiciary are now turning to a higher authority (the “inko dawaon ki nahi duaon ki zaroorat hai types”) now that no one really listens to what they say…they were depressed after the Afzal incident. The recent gas-row has clearly killed the spirits (Maa ka Ashirwad coupled with “Judge Jugglery).

This new breakthrough solves one purpose though; it gives the media new fodder to chew on. The Shiv-sena thing was getting far too old anyways, and after Rahulji’s’ ‘valorous’ display, the lions were not ready to roar. The serious issues this raises is the musical chairs our Government has indulged in… During the first 26/11 attacks we were informed that it was our beloved neighbour who had yet again betrayed or trust and it was ‘ISI kay Jasoos’ with a trick up their kameez. On the first anniversary we were informed that there was an Indian hand or more specifically a hindu hand. On the second anniversary Im anticipating a even cooler story with the theory that CIA is behind all this…After all, this nuclear deal has given our security forces a new set of “bombs”.

Reflections on the Pakistan Debate

2010-01-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

As I had mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was eagerly awaiting this evening’s live broadcast of the Intelligence Squared debate on Pakistan. You would be forgiven if you’re not especially enamoured of such events because they have become something of a dreary staple of Western policy circles. People who had never heard of Pakistan before confidently make policy pronouncements on “Af-Pak”, Swat, the “tribal areas” and rattle off a gaggle of Muslim names all in a misplaced effort to garner some form of intellectual capital.

Although this particular panel discussion suffered from some of those traits it was sufficiently stimulating for the most part. I was particularly impressed with Dr. Farzana Shaikh’s deposition. Dr Shaikh, a fellow with the Asia Programme at Chatham House put forth a thesis that seeks to view Pakistani affairs from the old-fashioned prism of Indo-Pak relations and Pakistan’s testy relationship with its founding faith. Her basic contention was that the Pakistani quagmire is a direct result of the the attempt to gain strategic parity with India. There were gasps of discomfort from the Pakistani members of the audience as Shaikh implied that it is time that Pakistan abandon this attempt. A gentleman in the Q&A session afterwards even questioned her “representativeness” as she wrote in the English language and worked for a Western organisation. Evidently, the irony of speaking in the English language escaped him.

Shaikh then, if I may be permitted the usage of the the term falls in the camp of the old school pragmatic secularists who wish to see Pakistan emerge as a developed member of international civil society. I would argue that the time for this Jinnahesque political project has passed and a radical re-imagination is required to foster a new and more sustainable political order on the Subcontinent for the benefit of all the populations involved.

One panelist whose speech I was eager to hear before the debate began was William Dalrymple. Dalrymple’s deposition convinced me that although he might have talents as a travel writer and as a chronicler of Mughal history he has serious deficiencies as an analyst of politics. His speech was a collection of clichés that seemed to have been gleaned from the op-ed pages of various English language newspapers. It’s basic aim seemed to be to reassure the audience that Pakistan hasn’t lagged behind India to the extent that the Western press made it out to be even attesting to the superiority of Pakistani roads and the high penetration of mobile phones. While no doubt true, it didn’t add much insight to the proceedings.

All in all though, it was a stimulating affair. I even had the opportunity to pose a question to Farzana Shaikh via Twitter that went something like this:

Re-integration with India is a utopian notion but is it not the most rational course forward?

This question simply aimed to take Dr Shaikh’s line of thought one step further. If Pakistan is to be a secular state in the classical Western sense as she envisions it then what is the rationale for its existence as a separate Islamic Republic? This of course draws attention to that rather large gorilla in the room that everybody would rather leave alone – the botched Partition of India.

Shaikh dismissed the proposition but to do so is understandable. Talking of Indo-Pak reunification or indulging in revisionist historical scholarship is to commit professional and political suicide as Mr Jaswant Singh, her fellow panellist knows well. He was quick to offer a palatable and politically correct response when the moderator posed my question to him.

Singh is infamous for his book on Jinnah that sought to emancipate the Quaid-e-Azam’s legacy and establish his secular credentials. However, Singh now a full-time public intellectual free from the exigencies of Indian party politics seems unwilling to embrace the logical corollary of his thesis – If Partition was a bad idea to begin with, why shirk from advocating its reversal now?

Ram, teri Ganga Maili

2009-12-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

An astonishing video has been brought to my attention thanks to the persipacious tree-huggers at Sepia Mutiny. Glenn Beck, who is some sort of Mormon preacher on FOX news and a darling of the American working class appears on screen to wag a finger at India for our lack of flushed toilets and clean Gangas.

The culture of offence-taking that pervades modern Western society has ensured that the guardians of India's cultural heritage residing in the United States have already emerged to roundly condemn and take pious offence at Glenn Beck's "ignorant" comments. Professor Amardeep Singh of Sepia Mutiny with the aid of CIA World Factbook argues - "about 1.2 billion people are likely to deem [the comments] to be offensive and tasteless." Yes, Professor Singh, I wager the Telanganites have already begun burning hastily-crafted effigies of Mr Beck as I type.

The NRI's have taken offence. But, how long will it take for this to snowball into a political controversy back in the motherland? I am most interested in the response of New Delhi and Bombay's well-informed and critical middle class. The kind whose progeny slobber at the mention of American higher education and Subway. Remember, this is a class that lethally combines a post-colonial hunger for Western approval with an almost unmatched intolerance for irony and sarcasm in the English language. These are the people of course, who dragged diplomatic bon vivant-raconteur Shashi Tharoor from the highest perches of 5 star luxury to Kerala House for daring to play around with the holy cows of India's political class.

There has never been any doubt that the social base of the Republican Party comprises of moose-hunting neo-Palinites whose primary political impulse is centered around childbirth and gun control rather than relations with rising Asia. On a serious note, Glenn Beck's criticism of Indian sanitary practices does not in any way reflect the content of the relationship between Republican security hawks and India's strategic establishment. As the affable Ashley Tellis once pointed out, both have an interest in limiting the influence of the Middle Kingdom on the Asian continent.

Update: The US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) issues a press release "condemning" Glenn Beck and demanding an apology from him and FOX News.

Swapan Dasgupta's Political Thought

2009-12-05T07:18:00.000-08:00

I have always maintained that Swapan Dasgupta represents one of the teen murtis of intellectual India's right wing revolt - the other two being Ashok Malik and Arun Shourie. In my view, it is these three gentlemen, in their role as public intellectuals that provide the most coherent voice to the concerns of conservative middle India.

Clearly, Mr Dasgupta occupies a charmed position in India's political discourse. He has established himself as the leading interpreter of the Indian Right for the country's English-speaking middle classes in a professional environment which teems with those of the left-liberal persuasion - no small feat. Recently, a more youthful, fashionable libertarian set has sprung up but they shall form the basis of a future post. Swapan compliments his aforementioned role with that of a political activist often appearing in public gatherings to speak in support of the BJP. This has earned him the sobriquet of "neo-ideologue" - not an unfair characterisation if his work on the BJP's 2004 Vision Document and (presumably) other party matters is taken into account.

Dasgupta's success in combining intellectual non-conformity with political activism is sometimes sneered at by those who sit on the high-horse of objective reportage and question his credentials as a journalist.

What is more interesting however, is the nature of Mr Dasgupta's political views. We know that he is a self-described friend of the BJP and a confirmed political conservative. But, what is the nature of this conservatism?

Reading through Dasgupta's vast output of essays and op-eds one gets the general impression that he has drunk deeply at the fountain of British conservatism. His work is full of references to major events in British history and he frequently utilises British conservative metaphors to make his point. I suppose this is a condition that ails all post-colonial intellectuals. A young Jawaharlal, fired by the emancipatory potential of Fabian thought, returned to the "dustbowls of Hindustan" to put into practice those convictions. Strictly speaking, Nehru was not post-colonial but I trust the reader grasps my point. This then, was the beginning of the famous Nehruvian consensus that has influenced more than two generations of independent India's intellectual establishment and continues to form the orthodoxy of intelligent conversation in the country.

I am unsure as to what extent Swapan Dasgupta holds the experience of British conservatism to be applicable to the Indian context. As I'm sure he would agree, all conservatisms are contextual and claim no universality. However, there is little doubt that he holds British conservatism and Britain's Conservative Party as the benchmark to which other conservative movements should aspire to.

It is here that we differ. I find the British Conservative impulse to be remarkably dull and staid - committed to the preservation of existing institutions and social norms as values in themselves, no matter their utility. It does well to live up to the caricature of conservatism as a particularly unimaginative, status-quoist and a downright barren mode of thought. Michael Oakeshott, a significant conservative thinker of the last century who also happened to be British argued that to be conservative is to esteem the present above all else. I find this sentiment especially problematic to sustain in an Indian context, a country crying out for a new kind of commitment and authenticity in politics.

As I've pointed out in a previous post, India's political culture is a paradox - in the sense that it is apolitical. Indians find themselves in a context where their Prime Minister and the leader of the ruling national party are both apolitical. In fact, the Prime Minister's disinterest in the political is marketed as a virtue to a public that has long suffered at the hands of professional politicians. Thus the kind of politics that India needs to embrace in order to ensure public good is a redemptive brand of politics. A conservative movement in India must present an alternative vision for the country and combine this with a vigorous opposition to the comfortable consensus in the political class. The cynicism of the average Indian however and his chalta hai manner may preclude that state of affairs from ever coming to pass.

Update: This piece was also cross-posted on Himal Southasian's Blog

US Intelligence Policy and India's Political Culture

2009-11-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

I've been reading two very interesting documents that provide an insight into the worldview of the American intelligence community - the CIA's Strategic Intent (2007) and the National Intelligence Strategy of the United States (2009) that is published by the Directorate of National Intelligence. The latter, charged with coordinating the vast intelligence apparatus of the United States and its myriad heads, agencies and organisations is now run by Admiral Dennis Blair - whom I remember making some eminently sensible appraisals of Asian security at an international forum.

It does seem that India's security establishment and the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) in particular could do with some of the clear-thinking that is presumed upon the authorship of a document of this kind. As I've pointed out in an earlier post, Indians tend to find the very notion of strategy esoteric and treat its mention with incomprehension. More importantly, it is the lack of an open hiring process that stymies the recruitment of young talent into the intelligence services. I was pleasantly surprised then, when I found positions in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) cheerfully advertised on the Ministry of Home Affairs website. Perhaps then, those shuffling bureaucrats in charge of gathering intelligence on external threats to India's national interests could take a leaf out of their sister organisation. I can imagine their skepticism however, India's political culture is uniquely apolitical - fostering the secession of the successful from the political and the public sphere rather than an active engagement. The lumpenisation of national politics, which recieved its most consummate expression in the Samajwadi Party's luddite manifesto of 2009 has made its way to the college campuses with candidates of a distinctly criminal disposition dominating. The young patriotic bourgeoisie that is meant to form the happy hunting ground of intelligence organisations is too alienated and too busy pursuing the capitalist dream at Amity Business School. The ones who do have public-service on their conscience are involved in waging war against the Indian State - be it through the media or the NGO andolans that proliferate in New Delhi and elsewhere. Arundhati Roy has inspired a generation of young Indians. Perhaps it is best to continue the practice of recruiting directly from the Indian Police Service, at least a modicum of nationalist value-consensus is ensured.

A return to American intelligence priorities then, is called for if this is post is to save itself from degenerating into a rant. There is a distinct change of tone between the CIA document and Admiral Blair's DNI document. The former, which was authored in 2007 reflects the prevailing intellectual currents of its time - the rise of India and China thesis. The CIA itself argues that "the rise of China and India and the emergence of new economic “centers” will transform the geopolitical and economic landscape." In the mid to late 2000's security policy discourse turned towards a theme that its still pursuing, the rise of Asia thesis. The argument runs that the West as symbolised first by Imperial Europe and later by the United States was loosing its preeminence in global politics and the locus of power both economic and political was shifting to Asia. This was the end of the Vasco de Gama era. India and China - nations with similar population sizes and GDP growth rates were held up as the examples that proved the theory. The Republican dehyphenation of India and Pakistan, India's inclusion into strategic Asia and the nuclear deal helped matters along.

Dennis Blair's Intelligence Strategy however is very different. India does not find a single mention in the United State's strategic priorities. Iran, North Korea, China and Russia make it to the list of top state-level concerns. There isn't any mention of Pakistan either. Funny, I remember them fighting a war somewhere near there.

More significantly, there is a plausible shift in the language deployed by author(s) of the DNI document. The "Vision" of the US Intelligence Community is one where the practice of intelligence "must be consistent with America's expectations for protection of privacy and civil liberties and respectful of human rights." This is all well and good but when did civil liberities become the preserve of the CIA and the intelligence community? Surely, it is the job of the State Department to conduct public relations? The inclusion of this text hints at a shift in priorities. American liberals - hurt by the string of international condemnation that accompanied George Bush's foreign adventures - are using their time in office to restore, as they see it, America's moral authority. In the process, they forget the real function of strategic policy - the preservation of American hegemony. Ashok Malik is correct in his assesment of Washington 2009 - "The Democrat leadership is intelligent, even cerebral, and often well-intentioned. It is, however, largely representative of the liberal-extreme Left end of the American political spectrum. At its worst, it resembles a coalition of NGO interests and is lacking in what may be called the ‘hard stuff’. The sense of realpolitik, the cold-blooded execution of military and coercive power, the big-picture strategic thinking: There is an absence of these qualities at the Democrat high table."

This paradigm shift however, is not sufficient in explaining India's downfall. The attacks on Bombay in the November of 2008 shattered the myth of India as a potential great power. The wind was taken out of India's geopolitical sails. India is back where it belongs, with Pakistan.

Stimulating Weekend Reading

2009-11-22T06:30:00.001-08:00

The Sunday Pioneer seems to have outdone itself today. It features op-eds by two of the finest observers of Indian political and social trends.

First, we have Swapan Dasgupta on the anniversary of the November attacks on Bombay. My favourite sentence from the piece is -

If initial trends are any indication, it is likely to become another occasion for media-sponsored indignation by celebrities — the spurious enough-is-enough syndrome until the fire next time. It will also be the occasion for some mindless repetition of meaningless homilies such as the mantra that “terrorists have no religion”.

Second, we have Ashok Malik on Sachin Tendulkar's completion of twenty years as an international cricketer. Malik is at his persipacious best with this line -

Great individuals often need, and sometimes build or summon, great contexts. Sachin has been the fulcrum of Indian cricket’s greatest generation — five good men, Tendulkar and Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman, and Anil Kumble. This was a Band of Brothers like no other. They rescued Indian cricket from the swamp of shame, renewed its spirit, taught it how it win — everywhere, in all conditions.

Finally, Martin Jaques writes what I think is a paradigm-defining piece on China for the LA Times. He pierces through to the heart of the neo-liberal contention - that an embrace of free-marketry will necessitate an embrace of political modernity - and denies it its philosophical premise. His characterisation of China as a civilisation-state rather than the nation-state of European imagination is convincing. Perhaps, it is time for the Gurcharan Das' of this world to stop villifying China and realise the potential of the Chinese model as a template for third-world development.

Arun Shourie holds forth at Harvard

2009-10-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last two hours listening to a recording of Arun Shourie's interaction with Harvard students instead of reading about Karl Mannheim's views on Conservatism. It was worth listening to the entire thing even with the moderator's unsettling diction. The most stimulating part of the discussion came right at the end when a member of the audience interrupted the moderator's closing statement and asked -

"If I may just ask one very short question that would probably interest everybody? How does one join a political party in India? If I wanted to join the BJP today, what do I have to do? Because I don't want to join my mohalla-level engagement given the skill set I bring to the table. How do I pitch in?"

Shourie gave an excellent answer to assorted chuckling:

"I think, get to know individuals and wait for the chance. But I would not sacrifice a good professional career in the pursuit of that goal"

Shourie then proceeds to broaden the scope of the question -

"You see, the one problem for us professionals is that we tend to see politics in a very narrow fashion i.e. How to enter a political party for the purposes of electoral politics. But why not ask a second question: how to participate in Indian public life - which is much larger than electoral politics and certainly much larger than the lives of these political parties and gangs. Take up an issue. Specialise in it. Education for example. We would have entered public life and we would be seen as effective on that point. Much better than trying to get into a political party."

I do think this exposition was quite significant. More so than Shourie's mild ticking-off of M.F. Hussain for his erotic treatment of the Sita-Hanuman relationship

The recording of the interaction at Harvard's Kennedy School in its entirety is available here. It is highly reccomended.

Obama and The Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

I have just recieved a startling piece of news. Barack Obama of Illinois has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - that holy grail of liberal statecraft - for his incomparable services to the cause of humanity. Absurdly, I find myself in direct agreement with Pakistan's Jammat-e-Islami on this matter: It is an embarrasing joke. With one fell swoop, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has succesfully eroded more than a century of painfully-built global legitimacy. It is a comment on the politico-cultural bias unique to Scandinavians whose lives condition them for an exxagerated appreciation of good-intentions, international conferences and the language of world-peace. Perhaps, it's an atonement for the invention of dynamite.

The political implications on Capitol Hill however, are infintely more fascinating. The well-intentioned award of the Nobel to Obama has put him in a rather tough position. It has elevated the romance of Obama and his world-historical stature to a 'comedy confection'. Now more than ever, Obama will face renewed pressure to 'do something', to act and to be seen to act on the policy quagmires of the day.

Rahm Emmanuel would do better to think strategically and advise his boss to politely reject the prize. Sadly for Obama, the damage has been done. He has been unable to manage the utopian expectations arising from his charismatic run for President. Charisma has been replaced by satire. The Scandinavians may just have written Barack Obama's political obituary.

Update: Ashok Malik writes on the topic in Tehelka

An Early-Morning Rant on Indian Foreign Policy

2009-10-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

Analysing Indian Foreign Policy is not a worthwhile intellectual endeavour. To be fair, my intellectual engagement with the world began with an interest in India’s geopolitics. This is probably because I have a Schmittian conception of all that is political. Because of this adversarial, Machtpolitik-esque understanding of politics, international politics naturally elicited my intellectual curiosity because it was a playing field in which the friend/enemy antithesis was at its most explicit, at least in the abstract. Nations could define their friends and enemies with relative ease and lack of moral opprobrium owing to their status as the most legitimate grouping playing the game of pursuing power. Thus, the ideal-type of nation operating in the context of a less than idyllic politics dictated by the animal impulses of greed, status and pride would be one that would pursue its interests as defined by power. As Morgenthau said, his Realism is both prescriptive and descriptive. Of course, it exposes the international environment as is, but it also yearns for the national state to act in a certain way, ostensibly because this Nietzeschean behaviour serves the nation’s interests best but because it slots in with Morgenthau’s worldview as well. This is not an indictment of Morgenthau the theorist, merely a reflection of Morgenthau the human.

The ideal environment then, for a political animal in the mould of Morgenthau and Nietzsche is one in which tribes can merrily go about the business of quarrelling violently, vigorously to amass as much power as possible. A necessary prerequisite to this state of affairs of course, would be to know one’s friends from one’s enemies. Juxtaposed on international politics, successful survival and flourishing is premised on having a conception of one’s external environment.

The reason that indulging in enthusiastic analyses of Indian Foreign Policy is an intellectually vacuous and ultimately dishonest endeavour is that they premise themselves on the hypothesis that India and her decision makers conceive of an external environment in the first place and undertake the ritual exercise of evaluating friends and enemies. This is a lie.

Indian analysts of Indian foreign policy are invariably English speaking and true to their post-colonial milieu are half-baked Macaulites. They combine a dazzling lack of appreciation of power relations and the unitary role of the State with a wholesale importation of American national security nomenclature. India, or rather New Delhi has amassed a quaint collection of ‘Think Tanks’ complete with Research Fellows and foreign interns. The city also is also home to a National Security Council (NSC) headed by a National Security Advisor (NSA) aided by a National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) staffed by security experts with doctoral degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University.

But, I digress. What I am trying to say is that India does not have a Foreign Policy. Hence, any analysis of Indian Foreign Policy is a dishonest exercise because there isn’t any policy to begin with. When I say ‘Policy’, I mean policy in the traditional sense - A course of action designed to achieve a certain objective. In my limited interactions with Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officials, I have found them blissfully ignorant of the external environment as an essentially hostile playground. They find the very notion of strategy esoteric. This is not surprising seeing as 80% of recent Foreign Service recruits did not elect the Indian diplomatic corps as their service of choice, preferring the plump Indian Administrative Service (IAS) instead where prospects of financial entrepreneurship are considerably rosier. Those who do end up in the IFS wangle their postings so as to find themselves in the United Kingdom or the United States as their progeny reach college-going age. As Beijing tests out a new maximalist strategy in Kashmir, it is not surprising that India’s venerable Ministry of External Affairs continues to spout meaningless homilie after meaningless homilie. Neville Chamberlain’s foreign policy has found a new home in South Block.

Sudheendra Kulkarni

2009-08-24T00:29:00.000-07:00

I can’t say that I ever fully understood Mr Kulkarni. I have always found his columns and other public utterances abstruse and rather dense, thereby finding it difficult to get a handle on his political philosophy. A rare exception to this general rule was Kulkarni’s open letter to Advani that argued for a recasting of RSS-BJP relations in the aftermath of the original Jinnah controversy. Essentially, Mr Kulkarni wanted to free up the party from micromanagement by Sangh interlopers – an admirable sentiment. His abstruseness apart, Mr Kulkarni emerges as a thinking man who represented a sober nationalism that attracted many to the party in the first place.

Kulkarni is not by any stretch a political figure of comparable national prominence to Jaswant Singh. His departure though is at least as disturbing because it represents the growing flight of intellectual capital away from the party. The cerebral right-wing talent the BJP managed to attract in the NDA years that made it the natural party of governance is being gradually weeded out. Arun Shourie, a modern day polymath is a virtual pariah, Yashwant Sinha has quit all party posts and the Jaswant Singh brouhaha is still playing out. It does seem that the party is turning to a certain atavism after the defeat. Swapan Dasgupta has argued that the once broad church of the Bharatiya Janata Party – accommodating strident Hindu assertion with centre-right nationalism – is turning into a sect with the former emerging as the overriding paradigm. Perhaps then, it is time for the urban Indian with his newfound cosmopolitanism to resurrect that ill-fated nexus of Parsi free thinkers, conventional nationalism and free enterprise – the Swatantra Party.

Update: One of Sudheendra Kulkarni's more readable pieces here

Of Jinnah, Jaswant and Hanuman...

2009-08-20T00:14:00.000-07:00

It is no secret that the BJP high-command has avoided any attempt at genuine reflection on the reasons for defeat in the 2009 General Elections. In fact, the emerging consensus within India’s miniscule right-wing intelligentsia is that the BJP never quite recovered from the defeat in 2004 and continued on with the 2009 campaign on autopilot. Admittedly, the media strategy in 2009 was excellent: The clever subversion of the Congress’ triumphalist ‘Jai Ho’ with the sober ‘Bhay Ho’ jingle and the inclusion of young, IT-savvy talent for LK Advani’s personal image boosting initiative are cases in point. All this however, could not hide the rot at the base of the party. This defeat was a political defeat. It was not about image management. It was not about re-packaging Hindutva in more modern prose. The electorate rejected India’s version of a conservative party wholeheartedly.

Rajnath Singh and his ilk realise this. They realise that if the party sat down and did some actual chintan at the Chintan Baithak, their variety of conservatism would be declared an electoral liability in newly aspirational India. The resulting restructuring of the BJP would inevitably cut short the political careers of certain sections of the party. Like any political animal, this group’s primary impulse is to survive in the face of looming obscurity. It is in this context that the shock expulsion of Jaswant Singh must be viewed.

While Jaswant Singh’s sacking may not be a case of calculated news management as Vinod Mehta of Outlook suggested on a current affairs programme, it definitely hints at a totalitarian impulse aimed at homogenising the party and smothering legitimate intellectual expression.

As it happens, the period of history that this political controversy has thrown up is equally fascinating. Jaswant Singh has propounded a contrarian reading of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s political philosophy. He is by no means the first to interpret Jinnah as a calm, secular politician. But, Mr Singh’s public role ensures that the book and the arguments contained therein receive an inordinate amount of media attention as compared to any other piece of scholarly work. The crux of his thesis, as I am given to understand is that history has been unfair to Jinnah. In a sense, Jinnah’s complicity in the Partition of India has been exaggerated and that of Nehru’s Congress has been underplayed - perhaps in order to make for a more comfortable nationalism for the Indian masses to subscribe to.

The pork-eating, cigar-smoking Jinnah clearly does not make for a very good poster boy for the Two Nation Theory and Pakistani nationalism. Jaswant Singh’s argument is that Jinnah’s mutation from secular nationalist to communal scaremonger was caused by his desire to carve out a space in Indian politics that he could call his own in the face of increasing Nehruvian hegemony. Jinnah then, crafted a constituency that evolved into Pakistan. He reserved his antipathy for Nehru and the Congress, not the Hindus. The idea of Pakistan, which germinated in the fecund brain of Cambridge student Choudhary Rahmat Ali in 1932 become a potent political weapon in the hands of Jinnah.

Perhaps it was a tad indiscreet for a practicing politician of national prominence to indulge in revisionist accounts of the founder of Pakistan whilst he remained a serving member of a political party. Winston Churchill for example, waited till his retirement from active public life before publishing his account of the Second World War. This abrupt expulsion however, smacks of an increasingly insecure leadership in the BJP that is keen to preserve the status quo and prolong its spell in power. The party is likely to lurch from one controversy to the other till the time a new generation of charismatic leadership is allowed to emerge. Jaswant Singh in the meantime has all the time in the world to write.

Shantaram

2009-05-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Shantaram. It's not the most efficient piece of fiction I've ever come across. Lin offers us unnecessary existential insights into the workings of the Universe and clutters the pages of the book with a raft of redundant characters. He does this perhaps to garner greater intellectual credibility for the book which would have otherwise been dismissed simply as a racy backpacker read by the literatti.

I think the author makes a mistake here because the very premise of the book - an Australian gangster's life in the Bombay Mafia - has enough sex appeal to stand on its own.

There are quite a few moments of thrill - Lin's escape from prison and his encounter with the street dogs near the slum for example. But the book unforgivably sags for much of the rump of the the 900 pages.

Shantaram is widely known to be about the "real-life" of Gregory David Roberts in Bombay. It's considered to be a piece of non-fiction. Therein lies its appeal. I was sad to find that this is not the case. It's pretty much all made up, some would say the fantastical product of two years in solitary confinement. This is what makes Shantaram even more irritating because the author had all the freedom in the world to tighten his work and make it a work of art - which it clearly is not.

Having said that, I would still recommend you buy and read this book because Shantaram simply cannot be ignored. Parts of it are well-written. Parts if it make you skip with glee and parts of it transport you to a zhodapatti in the less-fashionable parts of Bombay. It also makes for an excellent conversation piece.

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To dismiss any romantic notions you may have of Mr. Shantaram, take a look here

The Tehelka India-Pakistan Summit

2008-06-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

This fine morning I had the distinct pleasure of attending an event that I've been looking forward to for months. Fashionably titled, "India & Pakistan: Designing New Futures" this was the second in a series of London summits organised by Tehelka, the progressive, liberal, left-leaning, babu corruption-busting media house.

I turned up to the event in my Sunday finest. Which in this case was a long, red, floral kurta from FabIndia. I soon came to realise that this was not the favoured attire of all the other Subcontinental men present. Anyway, the day began with Jaswant Singh, the intellectual pillar of BJP Foreign & Defence policy delivering the keynote speech. Although the grand old man did slur his words quite a bit...he was lively, impassioned and delivered a stellar performance complete with such essentials as "India and Pakistan are from the same womb, of course we can talk to each other" All in all, it was a lot more accomodating of the other side than I expected.

Coffee Break (me drinking orange juice)

Upon returning to the seminar room, we were treated to a 10 minute "Vision Statement" by Nawaz Sharif, a video recorded especially for the event. While I have got over the sudden proliferation of hair on Mr Sharif's scalp, his speechmaking serves as a constant source of comic relief. Unsure as to whether the camera is on, he asks in delicately sedate Punjabi "hainjee?"which is later followed by a consistent inability to pronounce the word "swift" and long, embarrasing doe-eyed glances to his aide. This of course robs the rest of his speech of any seriousness and severly dents his credibility as a statesman in my eyes. Admittedly, the speech was concilliatory, "mistakes on both sides were made" and there were constant references to the region's civilisational greatness. To put this into context, post-Musharraf both Sharif & Zaradari have softened their public stance on Kashmir, leading to frantic finger-wagging by the likes of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen. This is part of a concerted tilt towards India and the realisation of her potential as a trade partner.

Then follows the first panel discussion on Kashmir. This included an excellent articulation of the conservative Indian position by Arun Jaitley, a more liberal Abhishek Singhvi, an emotional, eloquent yet slightly over the top speech by Farooq Abdullah and a painfully dismal effort by Mehbooba Mufti. Mehboobaji frankly looked like she wanted to be somewhere else and muddled her entire speech, leafing through a mass of papers. Perhaps I am being churlish and equating an inferior command of the English language with low political intellect. But, a true statesman or stateswoman gets her point across, whatever her disposition to the medium. This is perfectly illustrated by Tarun Vijay, RSS stalwart and not the most predisposed individual to English I have come across. He made his points forcefully and with vigour, despite the clear language barrier.

To return to Mr Jaitley's speech, he countered Ms. Mufti's call for greater autonomy by stating that the balance between the centre and the state is heavily tilted in the latter's favour in J & K's case. Furthermore, he raised the spectre of Kasmiri Pandits much to the glee of the cadre of Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP) present there.

Before I go any further, let me say this: I had forgotten how hierarchical (we) Indians are. If you're young, we won't take you seriously. If you're not a recognised part of the establishment, we won't take you seriously. Perhaps the creeping osmosis of the Western values system was inevitable, it's been 5 years now...but however much I might bash the West for myriad xenophobic reasons, you have got to give them this...they are egalitarian. The reason I'm fuming is simple: I didn't get to ask any questions or get close to any of the political head-honchos. I had expected to cultivate contacts within the Indian political establishment and impress them with my precocious knowledge and understanding, that was not to be.

Now that I have had my rant I did have the opportunity to engage with veteran statesman, Ram Jethmalani. He taught me a simple, yet significant lesson about Indian politics: You can't enter it unless you have the financial backbone (which Mr Jethmalani gained by practicing Criminal Law). To aspire to be a career politician India is to aspire to a life of honest, abject poverty.